25 Days of Christmas Collection
by Draenog Glas
Summary: Short flash fictions/drabbles on the 25 days of Christmas based on Tumblr's "25 Days of Fic". Will possibly be mostly Sonadow and really sappy, so be warned. Rated T for some chapters (language, some dark material).
1. Mistletoe (Sonadow)

The night was silent, the groves by their house moving gently as the cold wind brushed against it. He was wearing a thick overcoat, tan brown, leather, long, his feet silent as he watched the hours go by, the 5 am to the 6 to the 7.

His heart had beat against him for so long. He had laid across from his body, wishing to kiss him gently on the cheeks, on the lips, but as he gingerly held his hand, listening to the flow of his blood, he wanted more than that. His love was unrequited. They had lived together for so long, but they couldn't show any affection.

Was something wrong with him?

Is something wrong with me?

The questions were asked many times in his head. They often thumbed and made crevices in his brain. He watched the morning glow a pastel blue, a pastel pink, outside the window, and he slept in the chair, softly turning his head, his overcoat warming him through the cold house.

Shadow, I wanted more from you…

He woke up, turning the sheets away from him, the snow falling like feathers to the earth. He could hear the sound of the heater turning on, yet he still felt cold, wondering what Sonic had done with his long thick overcoat he hid himself in when he didn't want to talk to anyone.

He felt alone, as the sun peeked overhead, the raw pink bleeding into the silky blue.

Shadow, what of it…

He imagined their last conversation in his head, the way they argued with each other, their spit flying, their mouths so large they were gaping holes against the universe. They were lost, friends who had no benefits other than to gaze at old wounds and imagine what it was like to be forgotten, their holes torn and seeping.

He saw Sonic, his hands tucked in the sleeves of the overcoat, his lids shut, his mouth drooling, as the snow piled on the house, as the Christmas lights continued to shine so brightly against their eyes, another Christmas coming and going, his love unrequited.

Unquieted, his hands reached out to his palms, soothingly, his heart beating against him. He was wont to do this for so long, but he couldn't. He felt too ill, too sickened and cold from the winter.

Shadow, what are you doing…

His lips were pressed against his, their hearts touching, becoming one. Sonic stirred somewhat from his sleep, but remained in his dreams, silent, dreaming of a white Christmas where they could give each other such nice presents and a nice steaming mug of hot cocoa, and Shadow let him dream of those things, and thought he would dream of peppermint snow and lithium white snowmen and sugary sweet cookies that melted in their mouths…

He watched the mistletoe dangle in the ceiling above them, Sonic smiling widely as he left the room, his feet not making a single noise as he slept back, wind whistling from his ears, the winter seeming so inviting to his eyes…


	2. Hot Chocolate (SonicTails brotherly)

**A/N: This one is Sonic/Tails, brotherly.**

The hot chocolate was steaming, as they watched the snow drift from the sky, God's little flakes from the clouds. He was making a sculpture, a regular Michaelangelo.

He told him that it was time to get inside the house, before it got cold.

His shoes were like Mercury's stomping through the snow, hearing the crunching of the glass flakes. _Stomp stomp. Crunch crunch. _The marble had shattered apart upon his mighty footsteps, the child who thought he was God, the mighty Zeus of the lightning bolts that could sparkle up in the sky, His eyes wavering.

_Hurry_, he said.

The workshop seemed so warm inside. A sauna.

He had kept it warm, ever since his head injury. He wanted to help him, do anything for him. He thought he couldn't have a better friend than him, the one who cared so much, the one who loved so much, his smile so wide, so big, like a great chasm across his face.

_Hurry,_ he said again.

The hot chocolate was mint, the rim covered with peppermint candy. He knew of his love of mint, the sweet taste so dissolving in his mouth, the taste of winter, the taste of the God's holiday mead.

He wondered if he could go back to those times, with his mighty shoes that allowed him to run as fast as his friend, traveling to the island of the lonesome, Circe the witch's island, the cyclops who ate the men like great bowls of wine. He could defeat him all, with his swift boots, his swift intellect. He was smarter than Odysseus. And he could think that Odysseus was much like his friend, a fable hero all in himself.

_How's your cocoa_, he said, grinning like the path he made in the snow.

_Great_, he said. The workshop was warming him, his bones no longer cold, frozen, the sins of winter melting away. He held onto his scarf, a nice shade of lavender, and had took it off, before wrapping it on his friend, the hedgehog who was so brave, so mighty, just as mighty as he was.

_Be careful out there_, he had said.

The cyclops who was shaped like an egg, with his mighty fleet in the sky, he figured he would have to give him a Christmas gift, one wrapped and endowed with a blue ribbon, a ribbon the same brilliant shade of cobalt like him.

It was a gift he would remember, for the rest of his days. How old was the egghead again? 40? He could be 50 for all he knew. He lived in '40s, did he? Did he see the Christmas where the plans fired great flaming shells in his city? Was it too rude to ask him of what he experienced that made him the man he was today?

The wind chilled him as he opened the door, the scarf blowing in the wind and rustling, the snow inching its fingers inside.

He drank his cocoa, silently, melting with the heat, the ice turning to water that dripped from his flakes of hair.

He was a statue in itself, created by the mighty God. His shoes could travel with him, but it was too cold for the little fox, as his feet stomped on the floor, creating wet puddles wherever he walked. _Stomp stomp._


	3. Snow (Sonamy)

**A/N: This one is Sonamy. Not exactly romantic I guess. You can consider this a really deep friendship I guess.**

She watched the snow fall to the earth, her heart, in pieces, falling in her chest.

It thumped erratically, trying to pick up its lost pieces. Red threads, torn, bleeding, down into the crevices of her body. Her tears nearly shed of blood. Her heart had jumped everywhere, in her fractured ribs.

The candlelight tried to take away all the monsters in the dark, their long slender claws nearly scratching her of vein blood, but she held onto her dress, the monsters so grinning in their might, their feet always stumbling around the hardwood floors, her eyes always seeing the versicolor shades of yellow, green, blue. She could see the light in music, she could see the color in the sound of the wind. The snow sneaked in the corners of the window, the room becoming cold, frozen with hydra's breath.

They had called her Rose, but the rose inside her body, it was rotting and wilting. It was beating no more.

Her eyes were so rusty, nails that scraped the ceiling. Her feet were frozen to the bed. She didn't want to move away. She felt imprisoned, shackled by her drowsiness, her depression. Wicked sadness! It had cooled her body, to feel the blues, the tranquil shade, and her heart had felt so inanimate, beating no longer, trying to wretch itself free of her body senselessly.

She heard footsteps, the raked claws of monsters scratching on the floorboards, and she shuddered, shook, shivered, as the monster had come out free from her door, his innocent ears, his innocent eyes, his smile, and suddenly, her heart was put properly back in place. It had quivered inside her again.

"Everything all right in here?" He couldn't see the monsters. He couldn't see the apparitions that had tormented her. He could only see a beautiful, smiling face. A little 12 year old girl who needed him.

He closed the window, the chill dissolving away. With his presence, the monster had climbed away from her room. They were back in Hell, afraid of the blue hedgehog, the gentle, fun-loving, kind hedgehog.

She held her teddy bear tight, looking in his eyes. She knew she had to tell him.

"Things hurt me in the dark."

He scratched his head, trying to understand. She couldn't accuse him of being dumb. He didn't know what it was like to see spirits.

"What do those things do?"

"Oh. They…scratch me. Call me awful things. Take over me. I black out. It's not at all good to have."

Her heart beat vibrantly again, as he held her hand.

"I will protect you, Amy. You can count on me to make those monsters go away. I'm your friend, and I will always be."

He kissed her on the cheek, gently, feeling the flutter of his eyelashes. She giggled, holding his warm hand, holding on to the bear.

"Come on. Let's open presents. It's Christmas."

She smiled, forgetting all her troubles, for one moment in her calamitous life.


	4. Candy Canes (Sonadow)

They sat around the room, as the tree pricked through their senses, the smell, the vision, the joy they had received by just gazing at it, and they had decorated it with candy canes. Many different colors, blue raspberry candy canes, chocolate candy canes, cinnamon candy canes, they had hung around the tree like bloodied hooks, and Sonic had delicately hung one on his hand, taunting his friend with it, pretending that he was an Old Man Winter. An arthritic Santa Claus.

Shadow could usher a laugh, as he clamped onto a cigarette, the red embers dying away as he blew a cloud of smoke over the tree, ashes falling on the bare floor, ashtray absent.

Sonic had taken the candy cane, unwrapped the plastic casing, and suckled it, the reds beginning to become white. Christ's blood becoming his own.

"They taught me a long time ago that some humans believe the candy canes are the blood of this guy named Christ (but yet you're not allowed to say his name when you're angry, isn't that strange?). And they turn white when you eat it. I guess it's his wine or somethin'. Or whatever Pickle had taught me. And Christmas is an entirely Pagan holiday. Yet they don't like Halloween. Pagan too."

Maria had taught him these things a long time ago. A single god. With split personalities, like an egg yolk waiting to bleed and crack. The blood of all the gods that were inside one.

They celebrated Christmas too, and the sight of the tree had just made him miss her more. He cried often, thinking of her.

He dipped the cigarette in the ashtray, embers dying away. That was a long time ago. It had to pass.

Sonic broke off the candy cane he was sucking, chewing on it. He thought he was breaking the soul of Christ in many pieces, devouring it.

Yet as time went on, every Christmas, he was breaking apart. His soul was white and pale and fragile.

Shadow, can you put the star on top?

The hook of the cane was poking through his mouth like a fine holiday cigar, and he gave him a plastic angel, the star and and halo adorned with LED lights.

Shadow, you're family here…

He laughed, as he gave him a candy cane too, and told him to chew on that instead of a cigarette.

Let's open presents, Shadow…

He held his hand, as the blood of the god they barely knew began to dissolve on their tongues.

Do you see it? It's my heart. Keep it safe, Shadow.

He had stood close to him, the smile emanating, his kisses so sweet to his skin…

The blood of his past friend, it had slept safely in his own, the cane a pale white, absolved of all his miseries.

He stuck it in the blue hedgehog's mouth, opening presents, and he chewed it on, mulling it over with his own sweet, red and white thoughts. Passion and innocence.

Shadow placed the angel on top of the tree, glowing so bright that he had to shield his eyes.


	5. Christmas Tree

Her breath was eminent in the freezing air. She was tucked in nicely with her red scarf, her white furry coat (made her look so elegant, for a six year old girl), and she wore black boots, like her favorite hero of the season, Santa Claus. Cheese had trailed behind her, holding with his small amorphous hands their wagon, to take their desired Christmas tree to her mother's house. She giggled vivaciously, the snow collecting on her ears, on her extravagant coat, and she had touched them with her white gloved fingers, the crystals dissolving, the ones that Vanilla had told her that were unique in every way like people. She imagined snowflake people walking among the world, their ice cold hands feeling shocking, but soon, comforting, the snowflake people a kind, beautiful species.

The wagon marked their trail, as they met a man with combed beach white hair, and his teeth had shined so bright, almost as blinding as the snow when the light had refracted on it.

"Looking for a tree, my little girl?"

She nodded, smiling.

He directed her to the rows of massive green pines, dusted with a powder of the snowflake men and women, and as he shown her a beautiful pure white tree, as white as a dove's feathers, he asked her how much she had.

"Oh, well Mister, I only have about twenty dollars. Is that enough to buy this tree?"

And he laughed, and directed her to a small, barely green tree, the thorns still blushing brown, nearly baby shit-colored.

"That's all you're gettin', Miss Cream. Twenty dollars doesn't feed my family you know."

"It feeds mine!"

"You're different. What do you eat?"

"Well…we mainly eat out of cans donated from…"

His look was mocking, disdainful. She was quiet, as she bought the shitty tree and left, carrying it in their little red wagon, Cheese sighing.

"It's okay Cheese, I'm sure my mother would love this tree all the same…she always made the best out of everything, even when we didn't had much…"

She felt a shocking, stinging cold touch, the prick of an icy stalactite, as a man, bleach-colored, his eyes an arctic blue, had touched the little rabbit on the shoulder, smiling.

"I'll get that tree for you sweetie. What's your name?"

"My name is Cream, Mister…Mister…"

"Please. Call me Snowflake."

And she smiled, as the strange snowy man had went up to the other callous cold man and had asked him to donate the tree, as he knew Miss Vanilla, a wonderful rabbit woman who despite the harsh winter throes of the holidays, she had helped him and his family out, by feeding each of his millions of friends a piece of sugar, letting them shine brilliantly.

"Are you crazy, sir? Do you need to be put in an insane asylum? I'm not making a deal with unstable men like you…"

He sighed deeply, the snow that had powdered the tree like the sugar he so loved, the snowflakes had suddenly became men and women surrounding the salesman, and with their frozen, vacuous eyes, they all had given him a 20 dollar bill, all enough to feed the man's family.

"Merry Christmas," he said.

—

As her mother decorated their extravagant tree, she wondered where some of these wonderful things her mother could afford had come from, when she could barely afford much of a turkey, but she was quiet, staring at the tree's brilliant electric blue lights, as Vanilla opened the window to their poorly heated home, left a plate of sugar for the starving families in the air, and she smiled, thanking the frozen men with the warm hearts who had given her a wonderful, white Christmas.

Snowflake and the others danced on the windowsill, the panes becoming crystallized.


	6. Angel

**A/N: This one is a personal half poem/half prose. Interpret it however you wish.**

She had dipped in the precipitous water, the trench that marked the end of the world, the snow swarming around her like icy white fluffy bees, ready to sting her with their icicle stingers. She had dipped in the dark water, the monster's mouth, her feet danging in its jaws, and she saw how black it was, how it ventured to the ends of the universe. She could even see stars on the riptides above, the ring of planets inching closer to her death.

She jumped in, the water feeling as cold as her father's heart, the wretched giant who had destroyed her.

_Down in the trench she went…_

**She could see moss on the black needling rocks,**

**the fishes swarming to devour her whole,**

**crocodiles and eels with lantern eyes,**

**seeing her skin dissolve,**

**her breath emanating quickly on the surface…**

**Another dip, another breath collected on the glass**

_Her father's angry breath collecting on the winter pane_

_He was grotesque, already had aging hair…_

_Wisps of gray, collecting on his desk…_

**He gave a hand to her, to listen, to forgive**

**He had said that no one, even God, believed she was bad**

**God collects the wisps of curled up tears from her eyes…**

**He had blue fur, green innocuous eyes, his smile**

**It had** brightened** up the trench**

He lifted her high, from the **murky hole,**

_His wings were covered with frost, leeches, and seaweed_

_They were spread wide! And so was his lips_

_The wings, they were sinful, but she had promised him,_

_Promised him_

_That she would get herself out of this trench_

And into the warm arms of sanity

Her father wrapping the bloody steaks, ready to grill for yet another July night,

She wished he was dead, but he had told her,

That God couldn't get away with murder.

The white sand has withered away her madness.

She could barely tell anyone of who had saved her.

The lights on the Christmas tree sure were special, weren't they.

They were multi-colored orchids, opening their lips to swallow her pain

Make it into an anagram of happiness

He held her hand.

"You're not evil. You're loved."

She tried to remember his thick, coated words, but he had hugged her with his thick, blue fur coated arms.

"You were so small back then, when you held that knife in your hands. And you cried. And barely cut yourself. I had heard you screaming."

Screams were louder than words. Blood was louder than words. And no blood had come from her wrists.

He presented her a gift, topped with a silver ribbon, and he kissed her on the head, and said, "Merry Christmas."

She opened it, wondering what was inside.

It was the gift of art. The gift of writing. The gift of poetry.

And she couldn't be any more happier.

And since then, she wrote. The fires no longer peaked. They were quenched desires, no longer of illuminating insanities.

She dreams of the trench, still. But it is no longer with fear. It was a fading wound, but its black lips couldn't suck out her passion.


	7. Pie (SonKnux)

There was a warm, grape-filled pie that Sonic had meticulously made with his own burnt fingers, scratching the dough just right with his thick gloved fingertips, putting it in the oven just right, the pie coming out (somewhat) evenly baked. Sonic was proud of his recent creation, that he even believed he was a god of baking, one who could make anything out of scratch, even the very first pie that was made with apples back in Adam and Eve's day. A sinful apple pie. He thought of that and smiled, his large wide-toothed smirk.

He heard the door open, revealing a red echidna wearing a hunter's cap, and a plaid tweed jacket. He was rustling with the snow, the flakes dripping off his body. He had always hated winter, and always wanted to hibernate like the mammal he was originally supposed to be until God's fingers slipped.

He sighed, feeling the warmth inside the home. He smelled a pie, but he could also smell the scent of carbonized pie crusts, as Sonic's fingers, like God's, were also slipping, making the pies come out black like graphite.

The pencil couldn't sketch the pie correctly. It was full of charcoal, the shading inexact. A black and white picture, ruined by Sonic's negligence. He wanted the pies to be something special, and he only made one, only one pie had come out of the oven somewhat perfect, its inaccuracy a delight to all the still-life abstract fans, and he sighed, the same breath that came from Knuckles, coming from him.

"I'm sorry Knux…I wanted to make you a really good pie. I actually grabbed a lot of grapes, tried to make a pie out of it, as grapes are your favorite fruit and everything…and it just, didn't come out right. I really tried though, you can say I tried to make you happy…"

Knuckles laughed. Sonic hid his face, ashamed of his failures, but Knuckles had actually thought it was funny that his friend didn't know that grapes couldn't be cooked in the oven anyways. They would become raisins, as if the oven was the sun itself, drying them of their moisture.

A raisin pie, while the entire crust broke off and laid in flakes in the tin. It was a failure, but as Knuckles taught him of how to make his grandmother's blackberry pie, he also laughed, realizing his mistake, as very amateur and foolish it was, it was also silly, yet another misery he had committed that soon became nothing but a humorous joke, yet another step to becoming that god that would create the universe while he made an apple pie.

They made the dough from scratch, a universe being born. They made the crust, the many planets forming ridges and hills in that galaxy. Then the blackberries, the life on the planets that made life so beautiful, so delicious, then they baked it in the sun, watching everything form before their godlike eyes…

And they soon ate that universe, as another had died away, disappeared, and many years later, they made a new one, one better than ever. And this time, Sonic tried to make his fingers not slip. Not as much, anyways.


	8. Tinsel (Slight SonicBlaze)

**A/N: Warning you that while I should've made yet another light-hearted piece, this one ended up pretty dark, though it does have a good ending. It talks about mental illness again.**

The tree shined, like a piece of broken glass, as the shards of fragmented fabric was going around the tree, the intestines of a fey, going round, and round…

She imagined everything had a life, a piece of heart inside it. Organs had seeped, had breathed life into her little living room, into her little kitchen, and she cleaned the blood that gathered all over the walls and all over the floors, and she whistled, trying to distract herself from her delusions.

Washing hands? Did she do that? Maybe. Wash. Wash. Wash.

Count to four? Was four the official number of her life? She counted. One, two, three, four…

Everything was fine. Peachy keen. Because she counted to the number that had killed so many people in Japan.

She wiped the doorknob clean. Count to four. Then she opened the door, surprised to see it was Sonic, holding four roses. Four.

"Hey Blaze, I hope you don't mind me dropping by…"

She did mind. The kitchen wasn't clean! The living room was littered with corpses!

Could Sonic see these things? These deadly apparitions that poisoned her mind?

The tree was wrapped with intestines, the fluid coming out of them, the white fluid…

"Nice tree," he said.

"It's…not a nice tree," she said, as she scratched her neck. She imagined a mosquito sucking out her life, with an insulin needle proboscis…

"Of course it is!" He grinned widely, the teeth she saw that determined a killer, holding her close to him. She wanted to be safe, to be secure under this hedgehog, but something, something was holding her back…

"Do you…see things?" she asked.

"See things?" The question was very vague, very translucent. Sonic had tried to understand, wracking his brain to why the small purple cat was so worried all the time, but he sat on the couch, which Blaze could see were lungs, breathing in, breathing out…

"I see terrible things, Sonic. I see things you aren't supposed to see. I see many deaths unfolding before my eyes, I see organs of dead people littered on the ground, I see…I see…"

Sonic pointed to the tinsel.

"Do you see anything bad in that?"

"Yes! They are…they are…intest…"

He put the silver starry tinsel all around her, smiling still. "You know what I see? I see a movie star. An elegant lady. A princess. A warrior. A cat who is so strong and tries to keep it all in. But Blaze, you can imagine these things differently. I know you can do it. You don't have to think in gloom and doom. Think of how you see me."

She gazed at him, her almond eyes focused on his malachite eyes. She had known him to be a good friend, his eyes exuding warmth, friendliness, happiness, but Sonic had saw in hers despair, isolation, and madness.

Happiness was so far away from her. She wished she could cry, if the star wasn't shining so bright, the heart on top of the tree beating with its blood running down the pine bark.

"Blaze…"

What did it take to make that madness stop.

"Blaze…"

What would it take to make this into a good Christmas, the best one she ever had.

"Blaze…"

Take those pills…

"Blaze…"

Take that bullet…

"Blaze…"

Take that rope…

"Blaze."

She looked at him, the worry marking her face. Her arms had shook like lavender food-colored jello, and she had held his gift, slowly unwrapped it, and Sonic had sat across from her, concern in his eyes.

They were keys.

Keys to a van.

She wondered if it was to a brand new car she didn't need, as Sonic held them, his face a serious facade, holding onto her, hugging her for warmth in her miserable kitchen.

"We're taking you to get help Blaze. Come on, mental wellness is my gift to you. It's state of the art."

She was about to run away, call the police, try to make this hedgehog get away from her and back into her madness, the only way she knew how to function, but he seemed so reassuring, as he rubbed her back, talking to her softly, holding onto his white knitted hands…

They went outside. The breath gathered on the windows of the car, Sonic opening the door for her, bowing.

"You're still my princess, Blaze. Whether you're sick or well. I will make sure you're safe. No matter what."

She still had glitter from the tinsel on her hand, when Sonic wrapped it around her. She didn't see blood or horrible things in it. In fact, she thought it was beautiful, and it had reminded her of the stars in the night sky.

She fell asleep as he took her to the wellness center, dreaming of sweet dreams, for the first time in months…


	9. Ice Skating (Sonadow)

The snow globe shook, and dazzled with snow, the clearcut glass flakes falling to their feet, adorned with skates. The sharp blades that had cut the ice like an injury, and Sonic sat apprehensive of the pond, wondering whether it would keep still while they danced, or it would break, trapped underneath the sheets, freezing and tumbling towards hypothermia.

Shadow had strapped his feet to the skates, and he lifted him up, seeing worry in his face.

"Sonic…what's the matter? Are you…scared of ice skating?"

He wasn't sure how people even stood still on the skates. He tried a single row of wheels on rollerskates before, and could never properly stand up. He looked at the blades, wondering if anyone in hockey had stabbed anyone with them. He felt even standing, he could cut himself on them.

They would be dancing on pale white skin, hashing out each clear cut and letting their own worries show through. Bleeding it out.

Shadow held his hand. He skit across what looked like a frozen ocean, and he spun around, like a tortillon, blending all the shades in this canvas into something special, something special for them to remember, in their many years of being together.

The ice, how smooth it felt when he sliced across it! He was only an amateur pastel painter, trying to blend all the wrong colors. Shadow had shown him the moves, but the spinning, he could never get it down! He still was terrified of the ice buckling underneath them, plummeting towards a watery, icy hell, and he thought it belonged to the Eighth Circle of Hell, where some of the most notorious villains had lived. Had he belonged there? Was he about to join the same chasm as Hitler, as…as…

"The ice isn't going to break, Sonic. I promise you. You will be alright."

The canvas, he knew, was prepared to rip and tear any time. The bottom was a table, a solid surface, but he couldn't imagine sleeping down in the arctic glacial sea…

The cuts became more defined, as if they were butchers cutting steaks. The ice could be splitting apart with our power, he believed, but Shadow held his hand, showing him the way.

The snow had howled and ached around them! He felt cold, his scarf and ear-muffs nearly not enough! His skin was as blue as him, with the tundra wind, with the sea ready to eat him whole, the world prepared to crack like a kitchen egg on a smooth tiled floor, down below…

"You'll be okay," he kept repeating.

They sounded monotonous, his words, his efforts to calm him.

His heart had raced when Shadow had lift him high, seeing the moon so placent, so asleep like a little silver infant in God's womb, and he soon had recounted the experience as they both laid in bed, Shadow telling him that, after all, it wasn't so bad.

As he turned in his sleep, his eyes became red, bloody and tired. He wondered if his hands were shaking, if he was having nightmares again, of the ocean that once swallowed him up with its great big blue throat, so long ago…


	10. Frost (Sonadow)

The cold bellowed! Here he sat in his blanket, shivering, the heat in the house barely tepid, his hands feeling blue underneath his gloves, his tears soon to be frozen, it was a lonely winter, a cold winter, and he watched the frost grow on the side of the window, the rime that had formed like bacteria under his watchful eye, becoming a creature he hardly knew of, something unknown, something…something…

He couldn't drink all his hot cocoa. The Vicks nose drops had scattered all over the room, smelling like medicine, peppermint. The tree lay bare of decorations, no ornaments, lights, the snow falling faster, the ice pricking him further…

He could die of pneumonia. His quills were flat, unkempt, his body weak, placid, and he unwrapped a pack of cigarettes, ready to smoke, his hands wanting the warmth of fire again…

He was coming to see him. In this cold, lonely house. He coughed, counting the minutes he would arrive, the snow piling around the red home, the cigarette extinguished, the hours passed seeming like years, eons before he could see him again…

He had arrived, covered with a green scarf, holding onto a bundle of oleanders, reeking of venom. But he didn't know that. He just thought they were pretty.

They were layered with white snow, the sodium in this toxic concoction.

"Hi Shadow," he said.

He shook. His fingers were burnt, a little warmth in his body. He wished he could roll up the oleanders, and smoke them with their petals full of drugs. Maybe something that would cause him to hallucinate before he died. His nutmeg. His salvia.

He noticed he held a small silver giftbox with him, other than the permafrosted flowers. He wondered if their relationship truly meant anything anymore. He noticed how antsy he was, how he drank too much, how he once in a while divulged in weed, and his lungs were full of phlegm, the Vicks doing nothing to alleviate his symptoms. His hands felt too weak to tear off even shining wrapping paper. He asked him if he could open it for him.

The frost became a being he never saw, a being he knew he would be in several years, a being that he wished had never existed. Cold, ravenous, eating the glass on the window, its tongue salivating at the sight of escapes, of drugs, of alcohol, and it had climbed all around the edges, looking to devour the oleanders, to end his life.

He opened the present, which was a leather moleskin sketchbook. He wasn't sure if he wanted him to draw anymore, his monsters he saw everyday with his open lids. But Sonic said he liked his drawings. He thought they were very expressive, and he would like him to draw some more.

"My fingers aren't the best, but I could try drawing you something. What is it that you want?"

Sonic smiled. "Just think of whatever is in your head and sketch it out."

He did.

It was a monster that looked like him, with beer cans all around him, the drink causing his organs to be cold, frozen, even his heart. His eyes were slit, as if a smooth knife had cut across them, and they bled, continuously…

It was the best drawing he had made in years.

Sonic told him to take care of the oleanders. And he wanted to. He would devour it like the frost had done, and lay sickened until his illness had ate apart his consciousness, dying like the wicked monster he was.

The frost never seemed to melt, all that winter…


	11. Eggnog (SonKnux)

**A/N: Yeah I know, sorry for all the depressing ones I've been making. Guess it's getting to be that part of the month where my thoughts are dark, like I'm a phasing moon during December. Sheesh.**

**This one at least has a bit of a good resolution in the end.**

He drank some eggnog, to soothe out his mind.

And yet another, and another.

He had voraciously ate them, drank them, the holiday drink that he so loved, he wasn't sure if his feet could shuffle underneath him anymore, as the drink had dribbled his chin, like a hungry babe.

His children would see them. All like this. Jolly, with the contamination of alcohol in his brain. Taint. Bloodied muscle. He tried to write out his letters, containing his hoarse stomach that wanted to puke his lovelies.

Dear Julia…

Was that her name?

Juvila, like juvenile? Like the sound was coming from a tulip's lips? He couldn't remember any of his children's names. They were forgotten relics. He wasn't even sure of what they were doing now. She wanted to be an artist, he thought. He wanted to be a writer. Such creative types in his family. He could write letters when he was insane, when he was stabbed by alcohol in his brain, and in inebriation, he wrote,

I do not know who you are, but if I do, I cannot be more cursed in this family. This blood of the creative's, their silver blood, I cannot have it. It poisons me to even think of being creative. I could draw bloody roses, daggers through chests, ravens that seep of depression, but no, I cannot be creative. It is deadly. It is arsenic. I cannot live this way. Not any longer.

Stamp it. Send to whoever cared to read it. He didn't care.

The echidna rolled over in his bed. He wondered if he was like Scrooge. Never caring about his relatives, his fellow friends during Christmas. He was a humbug, as they called them. A moldy dirty bug who hated everything. And he wrapped himself around in his blanket, as if he was a mummified corpse, and fell asleep.

His friend then woke him up, his blue hedgehog friend, who came into the house without knocking. Very rude, he thought.

"Do you want to open presents or not? Do you not want to actually enjoy something in your life?"

He coughed and hacked as he unwrapped himself, a present under the Christmas tree. He had unfurled like a new rose during the winter, prepared to die.

"Why are you here?"

"How about you can call me the Ghost of Christmas Past, Present, and Future? Don't be such a Scrooge. I know what you need. You need to lay off the drinks and come and sit with me. We're going to watch a Christmas special. I'm going to take you to your past, to your present, and your future."

He laughed. He didn't believe him.

"Here's your past." He held it up. A bottle of Miller Lite.

"Did you think this would really make you creative, Knuckles? Getting drunk? The Sylvia Plath effect, the Charles Bukowski effect, it doesn't work. It only seemed to work because these people had something to write about. You have something to write about. There was always something in your heart."

"There never was, Sonic," he plainly stated. "The alcohol makes me write. It always made me brilliant. Without it, I'm…"

"Your present, right now." He unraveled the blinds, enfolding the echidna in light. He felt he was blind, too blind to see all the drinks he had around his bed. The wine, the rum and Cokes, the eggnog, the vodka chased down with a sweet lemonade…he hadn't cleaned up the room in years, the springs poking through his bed, the boards and sacks of liquor all around his dresser, his closet.

"Do you like this Knuckles? Do you really like what you're seeing here?"

"What are you getting at…I don't need you telling me what to do!"

"And here's your future!"

And when he blinked, Sonic was gone.

And so were the letters he wrote to his family. So were their pictures, and the works he created when he claimed the drink had made him so brilliant.

Nothing was left. Not even the house he was standing in, as the snow had froze him, pierced through him, and he said, "Okay. Fine. Take me to the nearest AA Sonic. I'll get help. Show me the way, your majesty."

His hand tightened around his. Although the grip was like steel, he could sense some warmth in it. And he could sense the tears in Sonic's face, as they walked, without boots or coats, to the city ahead of them, to a rehab facility.

"Do you still love me?"

"Huh?"

"I said, do you still love me?"

He looked away.

"Maybe. Just get help. That's all I'm asking for you to do. And then we can spend a real nice Christmas together next year. I promise."

And he was soon cold no longer, as the hand slipped away, in the rooms that were built with velvet and detox drugs.


	12. Cider (Sonadow)

He was warmed, by the warmth of his own thoughts, and the cider, it felt nice too, as he gulped it down, nearly burning his tongue, watching as the stars were fading away fast and the throes of morning was beginning to awaken…

He heard a knock on the roof of the house, the glass window on the ceiling that always shined through the sun room, the knives of light pricking through their eyes, opening.

Rouge had prepared more cider, the warm apple broth beginning to resonate inside the pot, and she peeked out of the crevice, and sat next to Sonic staring at the stars, her hands folded and tucked beneath her legs, the long stretch of morning beginning to spill out in the sky, the pink and yellow paint emerging…

She thought she had told Sonic too much. Too much of everything.

"I'm sorry," she said. "But Shadow can't come this Christmas. He's…very busy. Very busy with a lot…of things. Stop waiting for him, Sonic. He isn't coming."

Sonic could only grin at her, his teeth so pearlish, so opalescent. "He's coming. I know when he is. He is the scar of the morning sky. He told me that. He told me when the sun arrives, he will be there too."

"How long have you been waiting there, Sonic?"

He looked away, his cider cup becoming cold, the steam rising away from the plunging moon and into the bright golden arteries of the sky. He wasn't sure if he could give her the exact answer. So he said, "5 hours."

"I've been making you cider all night long for you to just wait for Shadow? Come inside hon, it's too cold out here. He isn't coming. He won't come for…" She stopped, her irises titillating. She wasn't sure if he would ever be back.

He shuddered. His scarf wasn't enough. But he knew he wasn't going to wear Rouge's sweaters she painstakingly made with her own hands thickened with her fingernails. But he couldn't stop staring at the sun. It promised too much.

He saw birds rising from their roosts, the black wings enveloping the blue chasm of the dawn. He never has seen so many birds, so many ravens especially, swarm the trees, with their wings looking doused with ink.

They were the Indian pen that had added the final touches to the painting. They colored in lines around the sun, to show the intensity of the heat, the red face that had welcomed Sonic into this world, blushing, crying, tickling him with the eyelashes.

Shadow was an angel, he told himself. He had lived in the sky, every time the morning had bled from the sorrows of night, he appeared, and he could feel his face being stroked softly, the angels calling him, heaven beginning to crack open like a gaping mouth, one that had sung of the ultimate sorrows, the ultimate joys.

Sonic had flew towards them, his wings that were birthed by his kiss. His cider had spilled on the house roof, cold and never drunk.


	13. Peppermint

His teeth had bled through the white chocolate, the dark chocolate casing, the peppermint candy pieces sprinkled on top. Amy had always made the best peppermint bark he thought, and he felt safe by her (for once, when she wasn't so crazy about her not-so-proclaimed boyfriend, Sonic), as the fire had crackled and growled by him, the house feeling so warm, the snow falling in scattered pieces of glass as God had taken His mighty hands and smashed a paperweight on heaven's floor.

She had made more, blending the dark chocolate with the white, the candy canes being smashed by her hammer, much like the paperweight, much like she herself was God.

The drone of the winter had sounded on. He lied on the couch, hoping something on TV would entice him, the claymation Christmas specials never on when he wanted to see them. He sighed, chocolate smeared on his face, and he sighed, groaning as deeply as the winter had.

The snow continued to drop, the glass flakes shattering once more on the floor, the sparks of shards ready to embed in his feet…

He counted the days till Christmas. It seemed too long. Every other day, even as he enjoyed the warmth, it was sickening sweet, to listen to the lyres of the bells, the TV, the fire, he wondered if he wouldn't develop a sickness in his stomach for it long.

Things seemed burnt out and decayed in winter. Too much fire to make people warm. Too many things dying of their leaves, their green vitality, he thought winter had devoured all the life in the world, all down in its white gullet, and he had brushed his hands swiftly, clasping them, praying to a god that had never believed in him, the child that was so small, so fragile, He often brushed him away, to hear instead, the voice of those who were fallen.

But even He couldn't listen to Satan's words.

The fox had shut off the TV. He counted how many fingers he had, to make sure he wasn't dreaming that he was exactly normal, not malfunctioned, like so many other people in his life.

Shadow was a malfunction, he thought. So was Amy. And Knuckles. They all were sickened, atrophied with greed and pride.

Sonic, even his eyes were no longer green. They were gray. Colorblind.

He had watched Amy pass the presents to him, the peppermint bark still halfway melting in his mouth. She had held the gifts that she thought were appropriate for Miles, the sanitizers and the Bibles and the watches that were inserted with other watches that stared at him with his hourly eyes.

Just like Santa had wished to bring him.

It didn't make much sense that he was dead now.

He knew of everything that went on in his mind. And he decided to spoil it, make it grow it longer, blacker, with thick tendrils of insanity.

He knew his eyes would soon turn gray too.

The peppermint bark melted, and he didn't appreciate the taste. He swallowed it bitterly, as he opened his insensible gifts.


	14. Gingerbread

The gingerbread, they had marched along the cookie pan, with their gingerbread pitchforks, marching down the aisle, ready to defeat the beast that was inside him.

Wasn't that funny, he said to himself. I'm a beast. Me, a hedgehog of all people. Hedgehogs weren't beasts. They were cuddly creatures despite their quills, sniffling and eating mealworms and anointing off anything that smelled strangely. But he wasn't like that. And he wasn't like this.

His gingerbreads had crumbled apart coming out of the pan. They were amputees, their arms and legs removed due to the cancer, the diabetes that spread through their soul. He felt sorry for them. There was only one that came out just right, and he decided to make him a doctor or lawyer. Make him a doctor, just to be safe, he said. Lawyers caused too much trouble.

He even aligned the amputees along their cots, the house that was now a hospital, treating the pained and sojourned gingerbread men that lied in the beds, groaning, moaning and bleeding of their icing. Sonic was beginning to think his humor was a bit morbid, but it was around night that he made these gingerbread men, and he always thought darker when the moon's small cut in the sky, bleeding with the stars cascading across. The razor blade of the moon, it bled too much, and it became full, a pale face staring at him back, his gloves hiding the mortality his skin was shedding, as his teeth had grown into blades, his arms were elastic, and his quills were dark, like the stars shadowed by the clouds on the foggy night of Christmas Eve…

Santa couldn't come and ask him for help. He was a monster! His eyes were slit, his body and mind had no shedding memories of what he used to be. He looked at all the gingerbread men who were sleeping in their hospital beds, ready to be laced with the demon's tongue, the men having their entire bodies torn apart by his scissoring teeth, his arms had grown around the cupboards, dumping sugar and flour into his gaping hole, the monster smearing chocolate all over the floor, tongue licking it apart with the sudden cravings of sweets, on this bladed, lacerated moonlit night.

The stars were beginning to fade away in his thinking. There was no light, and his claws had grown so long, so odious in their design, heinous! He had begun to cut across his skin, but no blood had come rushing out. Instead, simply that part of his body had disappeared from his grasp. Like the gingerbread men that had been devoured, he was being devoured by the werehog, and soon, the nails had come encroaching on his face, his arms, his legs, until the beast had slashed him apart, his body cut into a void existence, and the werehog had wished to be no longer alive, anymore.

—

Miles stepped into the kitchen, seeing the large mess, and the container of pills that were supposed to be one pill short of what was inside, the pill that inhibited the behaviour, the unconscious, beastly mind to lash out.

A chest of a gingerbread men's body, with its heart torn out, still remained on the counter.

Miles spilled the bottle of Prozac on the floor, in remembrance of him. They were his ashes, his reason why he was taken away from himself.


	15. Presents (Fantasy AU)

_The present_

_It was silver_

_But not topped with a bow_

_He could hear the contents shaking as he held it_

_Closely to his heart_

_It had beat with him_

_The sounds of ringing laughter_

_The joyful ringing of bells outside the frosty window_

_He had heard it all_

_He held the present with his own hands_

_And it had cried out_

_In joy_

He rocked it. He cradled it close to him, bouncing his knee, his eyes glittering in the sublime light, his smile fixed on his face, as he held the little hedgehog infant, the bottle filled with warm milk in his other hand, raised in the air.

He remembered when Tails was this young. And he had pledged to take care of this abandoned youth as much as he had to his brother, and he hugged the child close, telling him of a loose, fabled lullaby, of the castle that was in the sky, of the hedgehog prince who had lived there, ready to start a revolution on the world, with his small, pale hands.

_The castle in the sky_

_Laced with clouds_

_Undulations of the goddess' heart_

_It had burst with color_

_With life_

_The sun rises in a open bud_

_The dew melts away_

_In the diaphanous sheen_

_Of the blades of the fields_

_Never had I seen such love!_

_For a child who had ruled_

_Such a beautiful land!_

_The horses run_

_In the meadows below you_

_You take care of your people_

_With your heart, as diaphanous_

_As the grass that had shed_

_Their sunlit tears_

The infant cooed, as he rose, taking him across the living room, near the fire place, where the warmth had brewed, and the Christmas tree, that had a present waiting for him, his own child that his mother and father never seemed to want, a lovely child, a wonderful child Sonic thought, and he wasn't sure why he was left alone, in the winter tundra, waiting for his small body to glaciate. But he had taken him away from all the awful things, all the mean things his mommy and daddy had said to him, and he would live here, inside his golden heart that bled for everyone, even those he had never known.

He put him in his crib, and rocked him gently with his foot, as he read on how to care for such a tiny and fragile baby hedgehog. He had studied it meticulously. As he wanted to be a doting father for him, one that he never had, even when he came out of the womb.

He named him Silver, after the present he opened, the color that winter beheld outside, and he opened his present for him, a crown that had been endowed with rubies and garnets, and he had sung to him softly, as Tails had watched the new prince of his own little kingdom being spoiled with all the affectation he never got when he was born, and Tails had said, as Sonic had climbed into bed, watching the baby sleep comfortably in his little manger, "Rest little one, for a revolution will come, when you've fully grown from a small prince to a just and kind king. We will make the world come alive, once again, once the sun sprouts again."

The moon had shed its tears on the land for too long, he thought.


	16. Fireplace (Slight Sonadow)

The fire crackled, gurgled and hissed, as he poked the beast with his stick, letting the logs rest in the mouth of the monster.

The monster that had kept them warm, every winter.

He expected his friends to come. They were supposed to come for his Christmas gathering, but it was possibly too cold for them to want to come out of their warm abodes, out of their warm little rabbit holes.

The turkey sat on the table, choking with stuffing, the skin looking glazed with gravy. He wasn't sure where Tails was either. He went outside to get a Christmas gift in the stores that seemed so far away, a train away. Station Square was busy with festivities, and he hoped he would be alright, swimming in the sea of people who were shopping, rushing home to see their families, buying their own turkeys and hams and roast beefs, and he stabbed the turkey with his fork, seeing the gravy and juices seep out. It was a delicious turkey, seeming to be eaten with no one.

He felt lonely, this year.

He heard a jingling of bells outside his window. He thought it could've been ol' Saint Nick, but he knew he was only a child's tale, to keep children in line to get good gifts. Tails didn't even believe in him. But as he heard the rushing and chiming of bells, and reindeer hooves on top of his house, he shut off the fireplace, thinking someone was coming, someone special, with a red and black face of soot and cherries, with a sack as large as himself, with a white fluffy fur that looked like the whipped cream snow outside…

The sack was trapped in the chimney! Shadow came tumbling down, the wood still a little hot, the lifeform feeling the heat scorching him. He tried not to embarrass himself, as the toys and bric-bracs came plunging on his head, on the coals of the dead flames, and he huffed like a hedgehog, sounding like a freight train, and he gave Sonic his gift, wrapped in a little golden bow. "Take it, before I change my mind," he said.

He tore off the bow, unwrapped the wrapping, and he found the gift was a picture frame, of both Sonic and Shadow in what he called "grandma sweaters", sitting around the fireplace, with his other friends.

"The others are coming, so you better get that turkey warmed up. I hope it's good, but coming from you, I know you won't make it even halfway decent."

Sonic was used to his huffy attitude. It was his way of showing he cared.

The others arrived in droves, carrying boxes and bags of pies, hot cocoa, warm oven-roasted hams, and so much more. They sat at a long table, like a real family had, the families that none of them seemed to ever had, except for each other.

After the great feast, they sat around the fire place, drinking hot cocoa, watching Christmas specials on the TV, talking to each other, handing out presents.

As he laid his head on Shadow's shoulder, him slightly purring underneath his skin, he thought he truly wasn't lonely, anymore.


	17. Stockings (Sonadow)

Christmas stockings were worn, his feet adorned with mistletoe and holly. The snow fell steadily outside, Shadow working on clearing the road to their home. So strong, Sonic thought, as he was becoming sore, his arms red with strain, his eyes decorated with the silhouettes of the pain they went through to become together. To wake up every morning, to see their backs next to each other, their eyes sparkling in the moonlight, his fur rippling with glass, the blue hedgehog thought they were here to stay, with no one able to say anything else to their arrangement.

His father left him. But his heart was still cold towards him, as cold as the clouds that shrouded the sun.

The frying pan hissed! Pancakes glued to the griddle, frying, becoming real, more tangible for their gullets! He whispered secrets into it. He whispered even the government falling, of why soon they would die by their own hands. But Shadow would never hear it. Because ears were deaf and eyes were blind to anything we didn't want to see and hear.

His lips have felt too strenuous, kissing him all over. They needed to relax.

His stockinged feet were warm as he walked in the house, lying in bed, his eyes too enlightened by the light. The world was too euphoric for him to swallow it all.

Snow kept falling, whispers kept telling secrets, his feet felt vulnerable, by monsters sinking down further in his bed…

Eyes were awake, staring at the pastel paint, flaking off in the ceiling. Paint chips in their coffee. In a house with no heat.

The pan had ceased hissing. He turned it off, had lied in the bed, his breathing slow, deep, REM-filled.

Felt the ghostly hands reaching out, grabbing a hold of his stockings, and Sonic had awakened with a fit of laughter, kicking and bouncing in the bed, seeing the attacker of his swift fingers was Shadow, continuing to tickle him, tickling his chest, scratching his ears, as the snow fell slowly, heaven's angel feathers dropping further into the earth…

"Stop!" he cried. "Stop it now! Stop!" His laughter was harmonious, sounding like jingle bells in the freezing, frosting air. Shadow had held him close, kept him warm in his marks that held the fires of passion inside him, and they lied awake, listening to the fireplace kindling their old memories, their pain frozen, then defrosted, melting away, their lithium crystals that kept their voices quiet.

"Are we doing anything this year?" Shadow asked.

"I don't know." He listened to the sounds of the cars passing by, that were close to sounding like the ocean waves in a beach. Sometimes he wished to be back on the beach, with the warm, sultry air.

"You wanted to see Miles, right? He's living back at Station Square. The guy is working as a technician. Can't you believe that? All that tinkering with tools got him somewhere."

His passion had got him nearly nowhere, as the tide ebbed in and out, the snowy beach locked up with frozen memories.

"I'll try harder next time, Shadow."

"Hm?"

"I said I'd try harder. For you."

"You don't have to do anything." Rustling in his bed, he smelled the smell of burnt breakfast, and was getting up, Sonic holding onto his arm, never wanting to let go.

"Stay here, for a little while longer."

"But breakfast…"

"Stay."

He stayed.

And they wrapped each other in blankets and stocking socks, wishing and whispering away the entire winter.


	18. Cookies (Sequel to Christmas Tree)

Cookies were laid on the table, with a note to Santa, along with a glass of milk.

Cream had sat on the chair, excited for the man in red and white to come bring her presents, with the Christmas tree that the Frost People had bought her with their very own money. She could still remember how blue their fingers were, their eyes like Neptune, and their clothes soft, frilly, and dashed with ice. They were very cold people, with very warm hearts.

Her mother had prepared the turkey they also had bought them, along with cranberry sauce, stuffing, pies, and other wonderful things. Cream had never seen this much food in her six years of life, and she had seen many things when she went adventuring with Sonic, but she couldn't imagine having a feast at her mother's house, with her other friends like Sonic and Tails and Amy and Vanilla's gentleman, Vector and the Chaotix. Vanilla had told her to keep believing in these miracles, as their own god had granted them blessings and their long, white fingers had touched upon them, stroked their heads, and said, "Good work, my small child." Christmas had begun to bloom! She sat on the couch, listening to the wind whistle, the heavy boots creaking on their ceiling floors, the chimney dying away. Santa would come, Santa would come, she cried in glee! The milk and cookies had remained uneaten, the chocolate chips made with her own mother's toiling hands, and with her own tears, at how blissful and blessed they truly were, for creations that were merely fantasy, helping them.

Cheese wrapped himself with a blanket, cooing, ushering in the great man to come tumbling down, and they waited, eagerly, the cold wrapping around them, the blankets seeming to be such a nice venture, the venture into the world of dreams…

Come, come Santa! They had echoed. He had heard their call, but he was far away. He was carrying a giant sack of toys, ready to bring to the wonderful boys and girls, who have been so nice this year.

The eyes sinked, deep into the warmth of slumber, the Sandman taking them away, to meet with the Fixer of Dreams, as Cream had thought, many times before, her dreams were broken, but no longer. They were being fixed, by fantasy.

Santa had come, to see the children asleep. His garb was the color of maraschino cherries, and his skin was green, and scaly, but he wished them no harm at all to such a wonderful mother as Vanilla. He ate the cookies, (some of the best I ever had! He said) and swallowed the milk, and he stuffed Cream and Cheese's stockings, and gave her a present, a present that will keep her away from the doldrums of reality.

The next morning, Vanilla had awakened her child, with a present that was rectangular shaped. She opened it, seeing it was a book. Matilda, by Roald Dahl.

And for years, she read, to keep herself away from the darkness of winter, and the darkness of reality. She sunk further into the fantastic world her mother had believed in, as the Fixer of Dreams had rebuilt her world like a clock. The hours oozed on, the minutes were staved away from her reading, and the world appeared much brighter, a chiaroscuro of colors.


	19. Santa (Sonamy)

Alone, in the house that was cold, desecrated, fetid with the smell of loneliness and piss and fear. Sitting in the corner of the room, he rocked back and forth, watching the tiles crawl like insects, eating every last bit of sanity he had. The black hedgehog's fingers held aloft on the cutting moon, and he felt the blood rush down, the light rush down his eyes. His voice strangled, pinioned by chains, the irises begetting the rise he once had in his dogma, his power, his ability, but they were only torn poinsettias, and he gazed at the broken fingertips, fluid with the red release, and he wondered if he still had enough power to reach the chimney, to fire the wood like a grill, to hear the sizzling of his own enemies in his mind.

He dragged his corpse around the room. His legs might as well been fractured, broken, fragmented. A slug that was carrying its slimy entrails, leaving behind a viscous path. He wasn't sure how he got here. He wasn't sure how the events all went down that caused him to be in this house, to have his only friend die off, his arms bruised, as broken as his mind, in several different pieces of colored glass.

The voices continued to speak, with their sharp, shrapnel words.

_You're never going to survive…_

_You're a piece of shit!_

_You should kill yourself now!_

_Mommy, are we going to be okay?_

He managed to sear the chimney on, the fire reflecting the glass inside him, the Others' eyes glowing like pieces of tourmaline, topaz, and sapphires. He wanted the jewels gone. He wanted their eyes to pluck off, to be worn by anyone who could love them. No one could. No one could love The Others!

He heard the door open, a man wearing red, with a white wise beard, a man from the legends of Mordor, and he smiled, his bright red cheeks so prominent in the dark, as he said, "Merry Christmas, Sonic!"

_Sonic…_

_I'm not Sonic…_

_I'm Shadow…Shadow the Hedgehog…_

_And I'm Silver! I have come to take away the Iblis Trigger!_

_Shut the hell up, all of you!_

His eyes of tourmaline had sparkled again, his fur blue, ocean-soaked, and his body was so beaten, scarred, and he wasn't sure why the fat jolly man was here, or what he wanted to do with him. He had other problems to think about. The Others. They constantly beat in his head with their multi-colored fists. And his lips, so ashened with scarlet puss, he opened the gift he gave him, as the red man went to his sleigh, with his many reindeer ready to take him away.

The gift opened, revealing a note written in barely legible handwriting, from his son, Tails, and his wife, Amy:

_We're looking for you. We want to spend the holidays with you. We hope nothing bad is happening._

_Love,_

_Tails and Amy_

He fell asleep. He soon woke up in his bed, dreaming a wretched dream, a dream that he hoped would never happen. Never to his family. Never to his son, his wife.

As he slipped on slippers as the Christmas tree dazzled in the light, he heard voices whispering in his migrained head, telling him that The Others were just born on Jesus christening day, and they were ready, any time, to come home for the holidays.


	20. Snowman (This one is dark too Whoops)

The snowman, how soft, how white his flesh was!

It sparkled, it glowed! The snowman was not alive, he was a dead man, like you, like me, we all were dead, a long time ago. Reincarnated constantly, through the many eras of time that are birthed and deadened.

Tails packed the snow in, the globby form of the little white man beginning to form like a fetus in the winter's womb, the snow drifting his scarf, Sonic wondering when his little child will come inside, how cold, how treacherous this winter was!

The snowman reached out to him with his mitten hands, like his. He was his own child. He could imagine the icy being depending on him, reaching to be picked up, yes, a father, and he had created this small snowchild, that Tails wasn't sure at all if it could come inside. It was snow. It could not come inside. It was ice. Water. The sun would melt his skin as the sun had melt Icarus' wings.

Sonic had ushered him in. He said the sun would rise again. And when the sun rose, they could not speak or usher a word. The sun was the almighty wrathful god who would melt everything in its sight.

The sun tempered out from the clouds, the silver lining in the grayblue clouds, and Tails had watched his magnificent creation, the snow child that had stared at him with coalescent azurite blue eyes…The snow child had held, gripped her dress, and she whined, cried as the sun soon swallowed her entirely, the organs melting, the mitten hands becoming amorphous, her mouth so red, so bloody with the color of screams…her hat was soon the only thing remaining of the dutiful innocent snow child, Tails picking up her body as the sun had rose, up, up, up! And he cried, his feelings were down, down, down.

The sun wanted to burn him into a crisp, the blue hedgehog hiding behind the blinds, wishing this winter would be over. His hands had scraped over the paint chips of his wall, falling on the floor, like colorful snowflakes. He couldn't watch the death of his own snow child, the being with two tails, the child was only eight years old, and the tears, they fell down, down, down, like rain, as it soon erupted from the sky, as fireworks blasted off with sparks and flashes of fiery lightning.

Time to get out the beer. One drink. Two. Three. Four. That was enough. No, a little more. Five. Six. Seven. No, maybe more. Eight…Nine…A little more…

His lids had shut off the sun entirely, as each glass became empty, the rose inside his heart, the scars that bled, wilting…

Ten…Eleven…Twelve…

He was only eight.

The snow child of his was only an hour old.

To have a babe wrapped in snow cloth, coming from you, then wrenched away from the godless heretic sun!

Thirteen. His blood had stopped pulsing.

His back turned against the sun. It soon whittled away, the bloom of the chrysanthum becoming as dead and choked as he was.


	21. Jingle Bells (Based on Anne Sexton)

"Jingle bells!" said the paranoiac mind. "Jingle bells jingle bells jingle bells! Make them jingle, all the way, what fun would it be if I rolled up and died in my own caustic grave!"

The manics, the depressives, the schizos, the borderlines, the anorexics and bulimics, all the little children that had strayed away from God, they had surrounded the sleigh that held their merry little bells, her pink quills shining in the acidic light, her arms reaching for the food that was given to the starving sheltered women who suffered from poisons. Venoms from the white snakes that lied astrewn in their cupboards, white as milk, the walls as blue as baby kitten eyes.

The women, named Blaze and Serenity, sat across from the dark green leather seats, their bodies plucked, open, raw, and bare. They were waiting for the festering hand of the doctor to come, to take them away in his bright holy office, to give them their labels, and to give them permission of whatever pills that should be swallowed by their apprehensive gullets.

The food was never good. But yet her mouth gaped. She starved, o how hungry was she! How hungry was her child from far off in the corners of the country, its apple shaped fists ready to grip her breasts and suck it dry. Her mammalian glands have never ceased for her. They continued to be leaking for the wide gaping O of children.

The croissant of turkey, lettuce, mustard and cheese, along with pineapples, melons, and macaroni salad, what a feast! Oh how hungry was she! The jingle bells ringed throughout the halls, as the nurses handed out gifts, encased in glistening skin, she wondered what she had, who was so considerate to send her anything.

Her daughter, as she sobbed her tourmaline eyes away, she was off with the father, the man she rejected, despised, sliced in two were they with the heart's dagger. Her heartbeats sounded faint with his voice, never louder, never echoing as Echo had been trapped inside a cave.

They handed out cake, so white, so pale like her face. Topped with velvet roses, the icing never melted in the heat of the bedlam, the fires of Hell.

She ate it, o how hungry was she! Her skin laced with cyanide icing, the waitressnurses had stood before her, asking her what next year would be like for her, if the treatment, the shock therapy, the insulin injections, the prying of their little white eyes. They jingled the jingle bells and said Christmas will come and go, but yet another day, will the paranoiacs, the manics, the depressives, the schizos, the borderlines, the anorexics and bulimics, will they suffer in their own eternal hell, purging, cutting, killing off their emotions. Amy had sat staring at the listless face of her child and said,

"Joy, soon you will meet me again. And despite my mania, my depression, we will play until the sun rises in the sky once more again."

The windows were locked tight, along with the colorful pills that had strewn on the nurse's fingernails, and they closed the doors, and bid goodnight. The pink hedgehog, along with Blaze and Serenity, were strapped tight on their metal nests, the sun never shining in their fallen faces.


	22. Carols (Sonamy)

They sung, their throats parched with cold. The hedgehog had worn his coat for too long, old, rustic, a piece of history in his life. The winter blew through, the weather was distraught with ice, as the other carolers had walked across the street, their melodies echoing in the long streets ahead of them, Sonic's fingers feeling arched, hollow, a collection of icicles inside his body.

They sung at more houses. They were rarely given any pay. Many of the houses shut their doors on them. Christmas spirit was only penchant about gifts and the economy, and nothing else.

He sipped his hot cocoa, as Vector, Espio, and Charmy had discussed why the few coins in their bucket wasn't enough to get them even some McDonald's. Sonic's coat was wrapped in the wind, a silhouette casted on the bright eyes of the cars, and his eyes shut, imagining the world frozen in a layer of decay, full of greedy monsters who only wanted the gifts, the money, the food, and nothing more. He felt Christmas was more than that, but as they say in Rome: "Jesus was actually born on September."

He saw a young, pink, bright hedgehog girl, skipping in the streets, her coat so long, covering her from her cute head and toes. Upon seeing this lady, he wanted to take off her coat, warm her with his heart, and show her the way, with the golden lantern inside of it. A small rabbit was with her, wearing a knit cap and a fluffy coat, carrying Christmas toys. There were many of them. He surmised that they worked in a foster home, trying to create a nice Christmas for all the boys and girls who didn't have a mom and dad.

Sonic asked the others to sing, as the snow gathered around them, a scenic snowglobe inside, and as the night had grown its bladed wound in the sky, as the stars have seared through the flesh of the night, they sang, they sang of Jesus, they sang of Rudolph, they sang of Frosty, and other known gods near Christmas day. They were remembered, in catchy songs created back in the 60s. And Sonic had tied his scarf around hers, a knit ribbon showing his love, his passion for a nice, kind woman who was only trying to help out the poor and forgotten.

"Thank you so much, but what was this all for?" she had asked.

"I've seen your face a thousand times," he said, "but every single of those thousand times, I had been reborn. I have gone through many deaths, and many revivals, seeing the beauty of your kindness, your face. Please, come and be with me. Be with me this Christmas. We'll have cocoa and wine. We'll dine and open elaborate shells of gifts. We'll cry, we'll shout, we'll watch the gods on our television screen. Come this year with me."

She restrained her hand to her chest, seeing this hedgehog so passionate, but she knew she had to be in the foster home. She couldn't be with him, unless he, himself, has promised to sing to the children, to give them a fresh dinner of multiplied bread and fish.

He couldn't try to have that crown of thorns on his head. He couldn't sacrifice himself for the love of so many.

His coat ripped and torn in the weather, the icy fingers pricking him. The toys were all packaged colorfully, like psychiatric pills, ready to be given to the children who had lost so much. The poinsettias were proudly displayed in the black soil containers, and the children, some were selfish and only believed in gifts, but some had their hearts glow in this winter season, where the gods of winter were allegedly born.

Rome had said that Jesus was born in September. But everyone is reborn on Christmas day, the pain of doldrums, the chains of society, it all melted away in the ice and snow, and they both drank their wine, watched as the bread and fish were consumed, and the carols continued to ring in their ears, as they held hands, and had borne another life, among the reeds of poinsettias, the laughter and shouting of children who were learning their way home.


	23. Sled (SonicElise)

The sled was painted a pearl pink, as pretty as the dawning sun, as pretty as she was, and she said she wanted the Barbie sled, more than she wanted anything.

"Please? Josie has one! Brenda has one! And I don't! I don't have a good sled, not at all!"

Her mother had listened to her pleas, and bought her the sled.

The pearl pink hedgehog had carried her sled by her one arm, seeing the many hills she could glissade down. Her hands were in pink mittens, her coat was pink, and her little hat was pink. She was a pink infant, on Christmas eve.

She had climbed up a hill near a graveyard, the hill that her friends had dubbed "Suicide Hill". She thought they had named it that because many people had committed suicide there. Turns out it was both that, and it was suicide to go down it. The name of the hill scared her, but as she bit into her pink knitted mittens, she thought she needed to prove to her two girl friends that she was tough, and not at all like a prissy princess. With their new red sleds, without the white cursive Barbie insignia on them, she had saw the hill leading downward to the spiraling trees, the thorns of Hell, and she had sat on her sled, apprehensive.

Her feet blocked the descent to the snowy Hellish icy fires. She wanted to block it all away and go home to her mother, who was kind enough to buy her the sled for her. She thought her friends would've liked her to have a red sled, the colors of blood, but the girls had laughed and said she needed a Barbie one, cause Amy was a little pink hedgehog who was only 6.

The girls had stopped laughing when a blue hedgehog had touched her shoulder, his eyes sparkling in the snow, his smile so soft and iridescent, as he said, "What are you doing here, little girl? This hill is no place for you, or anyone. It's off-limits. Private property. None of you should be here."

"How can this graveyard by private property?" Brenda had asked, but the blue hedgehog had said nothing as the keys jingled in his overalls pocket, and he had told Amy and the other girls she couldn't be here. No one could be. The dead had to rest here.

As Amy's friends left, muttering under their breath in the cold air, she stayed, wondering what he meant that the dead had to rest, with no one at all tunneling down its hill. He had saw the hedgehog sit near the tombstones, handing out a piece of bread and wine to every grave, talking to them in a quiet, low voice. The pink girl, with her blooming curiosity, had watched the hedgehog carrying a ghostly girl's hand, her feather braided in her hair, her lips so saccharine and red, and he said, "You shouldn't have done it. You shouldn't have hurt yourself. You're so lucky that I was here, otherwise you would've been in that forest, where only demons and beasts live. All these spirits, you also, need to learn that suicide is not the solution to your problems. Being dead isn't fun, is it?"

He handed her a cube of white cheese, and she ate it, daintily.

"I know. I feel bad, Sonic. I feel bad for everything I've done this past life. I wished I would've stayed with you, but…"

"Too late now," he said, eyes avoiding her. He had laid a plate of cookies on the winter floor, as each of his spiritual guests had taken one, and ate them with relish. It was the only meal they got in a year, other than candy in Halloween.

Like a flickering light, Amy soon saw the spirits dissipate in the air for a splitting moment, as Sonic had used his jingling keys to open the warehouse in the further reaches of the graveyard, being able to see a bed and a small Christmas tree with pictures of the spirits hanging from them precariously, and he had closed the door, sleeping for the day. She could tell he was very tired.

The little pink girl had taken her little pink sled, and had tiptoed out of the graveyard, while the dead conversed with their wine, bread, cheese, and sandwiches given from their graveyard keeper. She wondered if being dead was all they said it would be, long, sorrowful, and possibly boring.

She saw the little white china-faced girl stare at the warehouse from what looked like a thousand miles away, and she had tears in her eyes, rushing down her pale face.


	24. Chestnuts (Follow Up to The Wishgiver)

Chestnuts were roasting, as the flames had burst higher with their orange glowing hands, and he had glumly sat as the snow shed crystals around his home, spinning the nuts around. He sighed, and felt like covering his hands in his head, sobbing mournfully as the day was only new, just placented, and the fires seemed to be blue in his vision, sapphire fire, while the rest of the home was like the Starry Night, with swirls of blue and stars, as the trees had screamed with their open toothed mouths.

The sun divulged in the clouds, and he always felt alone with it on Christmas eve. The stick could get warmer as the flames devoured it, and he could get burnt, but he haven't cared about injuries since 2009. His hands were worn and rustic, brown with spots like a decayed car. He could imagine metallic worms eating him apart already, until he soon dried away in the junkyard. The chestnuts were his favorite part about Christmas, but they barely tasted like anything. Even sugared and with a bit of caramellized sauce he couldn't taste anything. They were only bittersweet.

I was given strength to deal with this day…I was given the Lord's strength…

The blue hedgehog often felt nothing could hear his cries. Nothing could be upheld in his own religious beliefs. If people believed the last dying flame of his God, anyways. But he didn't believe in him either. If his own god was real, he wouldn't be lonely, battered, and worn, like a forgotten toy, a forgotten plaything from a little girl.

A little girl he loved.

He remembered the tickle fights they had, the bond that grew like the sun rising at midnight upon reading fairytale after fairytale, the ribbons and dresses she had made him wear because she thought he was quite cute in them. But those things were worn out in her as she grew up. His second daughter had grown too. And his third.

He had lived in this snowy landscape for so long, he had forgotten what it was like to spend a real Christmas with anyone. No one here wanted to come to his home. They were focused on their own problems. His god had taken pity on him, said that there was a chance he could be revived again like a golden phoenix, but he refused and said he would rather spend the rest of his time here, for what he done, in another life that the gods only knew about.

His god had laid out a plate of chili dogs for him, with a note that said he still had the option to come back up, but he felt his punishment was eternal, and this was as everlasting as Hell's fires were.

With the picture of Annabelle in one hand, and the chili dog in the other, he ate three of them with neither disgust or gusto. They didn't taste like anything. They were just as flavorless as the chestnuts.

He held the picture in his rocking arms, and sung softly, imagining the little girl was with him again. The little girl that was now free from the pinioning asylum, and in college. If only little girls could stay eternally as nymphs, but he knew it wasn't them that became the beast inside their own minds. It was him.


	25. Christmas Music (Sonadow)

The music belted out in the halls of their home, pastel blue, the windows dusted with crystal, the hedgehogs sleeping quietly in their beds, as the turntable continued to croon Bing Crosby and other old musicians that were as old and gray as the winter snow. The blue hedgehog, his turpentine eyes staring out at the fog, the lights that had glowed in the streets like incandescent eyes, he put on his slippers while Shadow slept soundly, moving and rustling in his nest. He didn't tell him of what his present would be. His lids were completely shut, masked by darkness, and he was quiet, as quiet as the streets outside.

He layered himself with red and white clothes, with the slippers slipped on some holly, and the din of the golden gramophone had grown louder, chaotic, as the snow blew so hard that God had cherry cheeks.

Shadow soon awoke, his own shadow lingering on the walls, and as he got up, it moved along with him, the shadow that had a sharp bladed smile, with hands that reached out for his. He was still mournful, oh so mournful ever since the death of his friends, and as the music, the rustling of wrapping paper, the laughter and the snow had grown louder, he couldn't sleep any longer, and had chosen to see what his friend could possibly be doing, on a mournful Christmas such as this.

Eggs had crackled! The bacon sizzled! He wanted everything to be perfect. He wanted his friend happy, and no longer full of sorrow. His hands were laced with his tears, too much of them, and he had wanted to lift his spirits, as Christmas was knocking on their door, and he had to let them in.

"Sonic…what is the meaning of this? You didn't had to do all this. I don't even know what the occasion is."

Sonic smiled, as bright as his shadow. "It's Christmas. You don't know what Christmas is, Shadow? It's a wonderful holiday where you spend time with your family, give presents, receive presents, and just have a fun time with them. I consider you my family, Shadow. You always were."

He handed him the plate of eggs, with the yolk eyeballs and meaty smile, and Shadow had thought that Sonic couldn't think he was 8 years old again. Last he was 8, he and Maria played many games together, but as her father had grown more strict with his creation and daughter, they soon couldn't celebrate Christmas. He considered it a Christian holiday. He soon no longer believed in God, as he had committed sins against him with his synthetic creations.

"You don't have to be Christian to celebrate Christmas Shadow. A lot of people celebrate it anyways."

Shadow poked his food with the fork, letting the egg yolk bleed onto the bacon. It reminded him too much of painful memories, on the soon drowning madness that Gerald had suffered. He soon became fully insane when Maria was shot and killed. And so did he.

"Shadow, I got a present for you."

He remembered when they once opened presents too. It seemed too long ago. But Shadow had said nothing, and held it delicately in his hands, wondering what it is.

He unwrapped it, slowly, savoring every last second he spent celebrating Christmas all over again. As he unearthed it from the soil of the wrapping paper, there was a box, and as he lifted the lid, it was a golden heart, wrapped in a shell of metal, so dense, barely scratched by idling hands, and as he held it in his hand as if it was a newborn infant, it had cried out a song, a song that he knew that Maria had sung him when he was so small, so long ago…

"Merry Christmas, Shad."

He tried to hide his tears, as the song had continued to bleat delicately, and he could feel it beating, along with his own heart.

The din had died away, to the sounds of the child who was senselessly murdered, long ago.

**AN: Merry Christmas to all of my readers. I'm sorry so many of them were dark, but I wasn't exactly in a great mood writing some of those.**

**I hope all of you have a fun time with your family, and you get all kinds of things and a lot of cheer. If you want to make me a bit happy, you can tell me what you think of the stories, and even if it's criticism, I will take it. I'm sorry to the ones who had criticized the story that they didn't like it, but while I will heed one's advice on the whole "He" sentence starter issue, I just think I should include a note saying if a story is dark or not.**

**Thank you for reading, and God bless.**


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